Conservatives and libertarians are often allied against common enemies:
the growth of the redistributive state, the assault on private property,
the denigration of the free market and various socialist plots large and
small. Ron Paul, Walter Williams, Jacob Sullum, Stephen Chapman and Charles
Murray have seen both labels applied to them and have had their written work
appear in the flagship publications of both movements. The Cato Institute
is variously described as a conservative and libertarian think tank.

A reminder of this overlap could be found in the reaction to a brief item
on the Drudge Report suggesting that libertarian talk show host Larry Elder
might run for office as a Republican –there were libertarians, including
some at Reason magazine's in-house blog, who wondered why Elder would desert
the Libertarian Party and conservatives surprised he wasn't already a Republican.

But occasionally the underlying ideological distinctions between libertarians
and conservatives surface. Some tried to highlight these differences with
regard to the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, but professed libertarians
like Brink Lindsey and Glenn Harlan Reynolds of Instapundit fame emerged
as staunch interventionists in contrast with a resolute antiwar right typified
by such publications as The American Conservative and Chronicles. Despite
the diversity of opinion both among those who describe themselves as conservatives
and those who describe themselves as libertarians, a number of post-9/11
policy disputes – the USA PATRIOT Act, the use of the military to spread
democracy, various military campaigns in the war on terror, the Bill of Rights
and privacy in an age of terrorism – have increasingly separated many
mainstream libertarians from large numbers of conventional conservatives.

Nevertheless, libertarian writers are still published in conservative newspapers,
magazines and websites. Libertarian policy institutes are still mined for
pro-market talking points by conservative commentators. Jonah Goldberg still
refers to libertarians as operationally being members of the political right.
What has kept many, perhaps most, libertarians operating within the broader
right is the fusionism championed by the venerable conservative magazine
that employs Goldberg, National Review.

Conceived by the late political theorist Frank Meyer, fusionism posited
that in the American Republic, libertarian means could be used to achieve
traditionalist ends. Want the traditional family to thrive? Stop subsidizing
illegitimacy through federal welfare payments. Want children to grow up to
be faithful and law-abiding? Stop funding the left-wing propaganda being
dispensed by public education programs. The synthesis was imperfect – some
Kirkian traditionalists and Strausian conservatives continued to be outspoken
about their differences with libertarians, Rothbardian libertarians in particular
were never co-opted by fusionism – but it allowed for libertarians
and conservatives to work together and share such common heroes as F.A. Hayek,
Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman and Peter Bauer.

Meyer's fusionism was always fine as far as it went, but it began to break
down when confronted by two different factors: Some conservatives were perfectly
comfortable using the state to promote their values; some libertarians cared
nothing for traditional morality and in fact regarded any concept of shared
values as collectivist nonsense.

This split was evident during the recent Bill Bennett gambling flap. Libertarian
criticism of Bennett in light of the Newsweek and Washington
Monthly revelations
equaled and perhaps exceeded left-liberal criticism in intensity. The former
education secretary and drug czar was an unrepentant drug warrior and leading
force for using the federal government to promote traditionalist conservative
objectives. But libertarian criticism was not limited to Bennett's designs
for the state: many were clearly put off by his propensity to judge lifestyles,
criticize individual choices and espouse limits on personal appetites. It
was these attributes of his moralizing persona as much as his stance on drugs
and other public policy issues that made libertarians rejoice in the knowledge
that he – at least arguably hypocritically – indulged in some
vices of his own.

Even before the Bennett story broke, there was an article by Stanley Kurtz
on gay marriage attempting to address some of the libertarian arguments,
which was followed by a cacophonous – and largely unfavorable – response
by some of the leading libertarian voices of the blogosphere. What was truly
remarkable about the ensuing debate is that traditionalist conservatives
felt Kurtz's arguments had convincingly carried the day while his libertarian
critics found them self-evidently absurd. Both sides simply talked past each
other. But it is important to note that the libertarian objection to Kurtz's
piece was not always confined to his partial defense of Sen. Rick Santorum's
thoughts on sodomy laws or even his insistence on state involvement in the
institution of marriage. Some libertarians explicitly rejected his call to
shared values and social conventions.

The tensions that have frayed the National Review fusionist consensus do
in part reflect ideological differences that can never completely be bridged.
But some of the arguments at the root of the conservative-libertarian schism
are counterproductive even from the perspective of the side of the debate
advancing them.

Government at all levels, and the federal government in particular, can
never function primarily as a morals police and will never be an adequate
guarantor of traditional values. The state is not inherently conservative.
The state can only grow and support itself by extracting wealth from the
private economy; excessive growth, even when self-styled conservatives are
running it, can only come at the expense of civil society (including what
in today's parlance we refer to as "faith-based institutions"),
the family and the community. The state can uphold individual rights and
prevent people from aggressing against others; it cannot make people internalize
virtues in the same was as other life-changing institutions that need room
to grow unfettered by government.

Just as conservatives must remember the limits of government, libertarians
must understand the importance of virtue. A free society rests in part on
shared values, including a common understanding of the intrinsic value of
each individual and the obligation to respect others' rights. It is not inconsistent
with a regime of minimal government to judge, shun and exclude certain conduct
while to affirming, upholding and exhorting certain other conduct. In fact,
under this regime the power of real community becomes even more important.
A belief in individualism does not mean ignoring the reality that human beings
are relational creatures, who live together and form their understandings
of the world around them together rather than in total isolation from one
another. It is thus important how they live together. The ability to live
peacefully together is vital to a free society and may be supported by the
moral and cultural framework of that society.

This of course does not solve every policy debate that may divide conservatives
and libertarians. Just because something is immoral does not mean that it
should be legal; just because something is legal does not mean it is moral;
just because some people reject the moral code that has been historically
shared by a particular society does not mean that everything that violates
this code should be legal.

In my own politics, I am a conservative-libertarian hybrid. I happen to
believe both in the traditional understanding of marriage and that sodomy,
prostitution and private adult consensual sex generally should be legal.
I believe society can and should, through law as well as custom, affirm the
two-parent, marriage-based family as the ideal without criminalizing other
arrangements and throwing people who live differently in jail. There is plenty
in that grab bag of positions to invite disagreement from all kinds of conservatives
and libertarians; specific policy positions can be debated.

What is important is a common understanding presupposed by Meyer's fusionism.
Edward Feser, a teacher of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los
Angeles, once offered the following description of this understanding in
an outstanding essay published on libertarian Lew Rockwell's website: "If
I had to sum up the common moral vision of libertarians and conservatives,
I would say it is a commitment to the idea of the dignity of man." As
Feser went on to note, libertarians tend to emphasize the fact that this
means the individual cannot be used as a means to another's end while conservatives
tend to emphasize conformity to a moral law that reflects this special dignity.
But each emphasis in its own way reflects a belief in the uniqueness of humanity
and the inherent value of the individual.

It is because of this belief that in the United States and (to a lesser
extent) Canada conservatives and libertarians, for all their differences
on many issues, have so often collaborated in a crucial task: Conserving
a society with a tradition of valuing individual liberty.